All I'm reading from this is that you're punishing your online customers because you have to contend to your retail operations.

On the contrary, what they're doing is making you, the customer, do the legwork by researching other retailers for a lower price to pricematch with instead of offering you the best price to begin with.

We have legal documents that prohibit us from having lower prices than our retail stores. We would love to be able to offer the same sort of pricing that other Canadian online houses have, but because of the franchise contracts we are simple not legally able to do so.

Yes, there is some minor effort involved in price matching, but it guarantees you the best price available. Keep in mind we don't just match the price, but beat it by 5%!

I am personally a huge fan of price matching as I do a lot of ordering online myself (music equipment, motorcycle gear, plumbing parts etc.) and I ALWAYS look to price match and save as much cash as possible.